


Capitol Hill

by salvabon



Category: Notting Hill (1999), The X-Files
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bookstore, Bisexual Fox Mulder, F/M, Krycek is getting downgraded from villain to annoying ex and roommate, Notting Hill AU, actress Scully, bookstore owner Mulder, this is incredibly self-indulgent and the target audience is two people maybe three
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:35:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28056981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salvabon/pseuds/salvabon
Summary: It is not every day that a world-famous actress like Dana Scully walks into Fox Mulder's tiny paranormal bookshop.
Relationships: Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Comments: 8
Kudos: 23





	Capitol Hill

**Author's Note:**

  * For [toboldlygohoweverimprobable](https://archiveofourown.org/users/toboldlygohoweverimprobable/gifts).



> I hope you enjoy this Órla and also anyone who might stumble over this.

The chime of the doorbell and a rush of cold air signalled that someone had opened the door. Mulder looked up lazily from a copy of Heuvelman’s ‘On the Track of Unknown Animals’, expecting Monica to take on whatever customer had lost their way into their small bookshop.   
“Do you have a copy of Moby-Dick?” the woman who had just entered the store asked. Her face was framed by shoulder-length hair and she looked familiar in a way he couldn’t pin-point. He had never been very good with faces. Information, details, any other thing yes, but not faces. The sunglasses she was wearing were not exactly helpful either. She was holding shopping bags with names of brands he was too poor to have ever heard of.   
Mulder scrambled to stand more upright behind his register: “I am sorry, but we here at I Want To Believe specialize in the paranormal and unexplained. But I can offer you a very fine selection of books on research into undiscovered deep sea creatures? Giant squid? Ghost ships?”   
The woman gave him an amused smile: “Perhaps you have something on the disappearance of the Erebus and Terror?”   
Mulder nodded and negotiated the space between the register and the shelves, the floor stacked hip-high with even more books waiting to be shelved.   
“I think I do have something in this direction,” he said and scanned a shelf. “Here,” he grabbed and held up a couple of books in a swift motion that had taken lots of practice as a bookseller.  
“Time travel and the Franklin Expedition?”   
Mulder could see her frown under her sunglasses.   
“It is fascinating, and Cohen actually cites his sources and lays out a pretty strong argument. In contrast to Brook-” he held up another book, “whose argument that the Erebus and Terror were abducted by aliens is shaky at best.”   
This got him another amused smile and what might have been an eye roll. Mulder’s eyes wandered instinctively to the monitor on his register. He dropped the books into the woman’s hands and rushed around a corner.   
“You absolutely cannot smoke in here.”   
An elderly man was leaning idly against a shelf, a book in one and cigarette in the other hand.   
“There was no sign.”   
He remained in the same position, blowing the smoke in his direction unbothered.  
“There shouldn’t have to be a sign, this is a bookshop.”   
The man shrugged and got out a pocket ashtray almost in slow motion.   
“If you say so.”   
He followed Mulder back to the main portion of the shop and placed the book he had been holding on the register.   
“This book is laughable,” the man said, pointing at one of their books on the Kennedy Assassination. Mulder typed in the price and accepted the man’s cash without any comment. At least he was buying something.  
“Why are you buying it then?” The woman, who against all odds was still there, asked.   
“Sometimes you need a laugh,” the man smiled with the deadpan smile of one of the politicians roaming the city.   
“Would you give me an autograph?”   
The woman sighed and got out a pen, signing the man’s receipt.   
“Dana Scully, please stop smoking,” the man read out with a chuckle that made Mulder’s skin crawl. He took his change and left, making the doorbell ring one more time.   
With the noise of the door the realization finally hit Mulder: Dana Scully.   
International film star Dana Scully was standing in his shop.   
“Have you found something you’re interested in?” He asked to fill the silence and hopefully make it seem like he hadn’t only just realized who he was talking to.   
“I think I will take this one,” she handed him David Brook’s “Aliens in the Ice: The tragic fate of the HMS Erebus and Terror” and put the other three books she had been holding aside.   
“Are you sure?” Mulder raised an eyebrow. “It is quite terrible.”   
Dana Scully shrugged: “It can’t be worse than the last script my agent gave me.”   
“Well I wouldn’t bet on it,” he said as he took her money. “You know what, for this price I would give you the other copies we have of it as well, in case you need to throw anything at paparazzi or you can’t think of a present for someone you hate.”   
He handed over her purchase in a neat little paper bag that Monica had ordered to be printed with a UFO and their name.   
Dana Scully pointed behind him.   
“Did that poster come before or after the store?”  
“Before actually, I found it in a little head shop on M street. We thought it would be a good name for the store.”   
Speaking of the devil, Monica Reyes, Mulder’s business partner and only other employee of the bookshop, wandered into view.   
“No way, is that Dana Scully?!”  
“You should go,” Mulder advised with a wink and a nod to the door.   
“Thank you,” Dana Scully smiled and off she was, with another ring of the bell and another rush of cold air.   
“I always had a crush on her,” Monica said with a dreamy sigh.  
“Monica, where even were you?”   
“In the break room,” she shrugged then added: “Filling out forms. Orders. That kinda stuff. Also, could you get me a coffee?”   
Mulder sighed but grabbed his coat and purse anyway. He could need some fresh air and a coffee was probably the right choice now too.   
He met Monica Reyes some time after moving to DC, and they became fast friends, mainly based on their shared interest for anything unexplained, weird and paranormal. She maybe wasn’t the best business partner, but she surely was one of his closest friends.   
Mulder walked down to the nearest coffee shop, an indie-café-turned-Starbucks, and gave the barista their usual order. He also got two muffins, one for him and one because he knew his roommate would steal one anyway.   
After a pretty gruesome break-up a couple of months ago, Mulder had made the extraordinarily bad decision to let Alex Krycek move in with him, his ex from college. They had stayed strictly platonic this time, Mulder simply needed someone to pay rent, and Krycek - he actually had no idea what he was getting out of this. Probably free food and the chance to torture him.   
Mulder was deep in thoughts about how he could get Krycek to move out again when he felt himself bump into someone.   
One of the lids came off his coffee order and spilled over his shirt and what he quickly recognized as a designer outfit. A designer outfit worn by Dana Scully.   
“I am so sorry!” Mulder exclaimed out of reflex but in all earnest as his brain caught up with what he had done.   
“My place is close to here, I could quickly clean this for you-”   
“Is this your go-to pickup line?” the actress asked incredulously as she looked up and down her ruined outfit. Thankfully, the coffee had cooled down to be simply unpleasant instead of scalding hot. Two dark stains were adorning both of their outfits now and Mulder was tied between trying to help her to remove the stain and not wanting to make it worse.   
“No, I swear, it is just across the street. See the window with the X?” He pointed to his apartment.   
“You can use my bathroom and I probably have one of those stain removers somewhere and-”  
“Now stop talking and just take me there.”  
The two quickly jaywalked the distance to his place. It wasn’t a very nice building, but he and Diana hadn’t been able to afford anything else on their salaries. They entered the elevator and Mulder pressed for his floor and hoped for the doors to close before anyone else could enter.   
“I am Fox Mulder, by the way. Now we’re even on the name thing.”   
Dana Scully took off her sunglasses and turned to him, all smiles and snark again: “Fox?”   
“Long story, you can call me Mulder. Everyone calls me Mulder, even my parents do.”   
“Nice to meet you, Mulder.”   
They shook hands. The elevator doors opened.   
“This way,” he explained and turned a corner, praying he would stop making a fool out of himself.   
“You know, everyone calls me Dana, the directors, the journalists, the fans. All as if they know me. I think I would enjoy just being Scully for a change.”   
Mulder got out the keys to apartment 42.   
“The bathroom is the first door to the right, Scully.”   
Scully put down all bags except for one and vanished into the bathroom with a smile.   
Mulder used the time to clean up his living room a little, hoping she hadn’t noticed the chaos of half-eaten takeaway, porn and his blanket from when he was sleeping on the couch.  
His brain was doing double time to keep up with what was happening right now. Mulder had always taken pride in being one of the smart ones, he graduated top of his class after all, but this was too much even for him. The most beautiful woman in the world was changing in his bathroom right this second. Because he had spilled his drink on her. After she had actually bought a book in his shop. No one would ever believe him.   
The door creaked open and Mulder turned around to see Scully standing in something pretty and black and surely priceless. Her midriff was exposed tastefully and Mulder had a hard time not staring. An elegant blazer rounded off the outfit. With the sunglasses on she could pass for a member of the DC high-society, a lawyer maybe.   
“Can I offer you a drink?”   
Mulder strode through the room and opened the fridge.  
“I have orange juice and uhhh tap water. Or an IPA if you’re into day drinking.”  
“No, thank you.”  
“A snack maybe? We have sunflower seeds. It is just about the only thing my roommate doesn’t steal. They are ready salted. You have to crack them open with your teeth like this,” he got one from the bag and demonstrated by crunching down on one with his incisors.   
“It is way too much effort for a snack,” he rambled before spitting out the shell.   
“Makes you feel like an animal in the zoo when they hide their food in a puzzle for enrichment, but they taste great and I should probably stop talking, shouldn’t I?”   
Scully gave him a polite smile that signalled yes.   
“You should probably go, before my roommate sees you.”  
“Thanks for your help.”  
“Before you go, may I just say you look stunning. I just wanted to take that one chance, after all, there is no chance you’re coming back to the bookshop after you’ve read that terrible book.”  
He led her back to the door, those three or four steps in his tiny apartment.   
“It was nice meeting you. Surreal, but nice.”   
Scully gave him one last movie star smile and left.   
Mulder groaned internally. What had he been talking about?  
Just as he was ready to drown himself in his aquarium it knocked again on his door. It was probably Krycek, who lost his key again.   
It was Scully.   
“I forgot my other bags,” she confessed and rushed past him to collect what he guessed were more gorgeous expensive clothes - and one book on alien abduction.   
Back at the door, Mulder tried his best to shut up this time. He wouldn’t ruin it again, he would smile and bid her goodbye so that her last memory of him wouldn’t be that of a bumbling fool talking about sunflower seeds.   
And then she kissed him.   
It happened just like that. One moment he was trying to keep his cool and the next she had leaned in to kiss him. She had pulled him down to her height, meeting him halfway via tippy-toes. Mulder briefly felt his soul leaving his body, whether from shock or elation he could not tell, and he could almost see this kiss play out as a movie scene. Mulder could feel their kiss being projected on a 40 feet cinema screen, he could hear the soundtrack swell. And then it was over and she was gone. And no one would ever believe him, not even Monica.

**Author's Note:**

> You have permission to scream at me until I finish this.   
> And yes I know Mulder's apartment is in Alexandria but the AU doesn't work with that, so they're all in DC now. Alexandria where? Takoma Park who?  
> Also this has been edited only minimally but so be it.


End file.
